Maryanne Chisholm picked up painting while in prison and later began minting that art into NFTs.During the last bull market, Chisholm worked roughly 80 hours per week as an NFT artist.Chisholm says Ethereum gas fees take a large chunk of her income as a creator.Maryanne Chisholm picked up painting while she spent over a decade in Perryville Women’s Prison in Goodyear, Arizona.
“I started by doing pencil drawings and colored pencil pieces on the back of envelopes,” Chisholm told Insider, adding that art helped her cope with various mental health diagnoses.”I just did the best I could do with what I had at the time.”
She was sentenced after a white-collar crime conviction, spending time behind bars from 2005 to 2018.Once she was released, she pursued fine art full-time in 2018, and later pivoted to NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, as a way to make a living.
After Beeple’s “Everyday: The First 5000 days” sold for nearly $70 million at Christie’s last year, Chisholm began teaching herself about the nascent NFT space.She connected with other artists and creators online and ended up garnering more than 64,000 followers.Her artwork tackles themes like mental health, often coupled with vibrantly colored abstract paintings and portraits.
“NFTs for me are about taking control of our future.
We can create our own income.We don’t have to work for big corporations,” she said.”We do not have to go to these nine-to-five jobs…It gives us a vehicle to share our creativity and our stories.”
The 57-year-old brought in about $117,000 worth of sales in roughly a year, per a screenshot of her accounting records reviewed by Insider.Chisholm says she has sold about 330 pieces of her digital artwork so far.During the recent bull market , she worked 80 hours per week pursuing a career as an NFT artist.
Chisholm made roughly 19.3 ether, per dashboard cryptoart.io , on ether-based NFTs alone.During Ethereum’s all-time high in November, this would have been roughly $93,000, per crypto dashboard Messari.Currently, this amount totals $22,125 due to the token’s steep decline in recent months.
The artist sold NFTs on other blockchains like Tezos as well, but those were not added to the total.
Bear market impact on NFT sales Ethereum, which is used to mint and purchase NFTs, is down 76.08% from its record high, according to Messari.Subsequently, blue-chip collections have seen their values fall as well, per a DappRadar industry report on June 7.OpenSea, one of the largest NFT marketplaces, declined 65% in trading volumes last month.
Amid the broader crypto market downturn , NFT artists have borne hits to their livelihood.Creators like Chisholm say their income is in a state of flux due to crypto’s volatility .
“We’re in the middle of a bear market right now.Business was really wonderful, and then it was really awful,” she said, adding that she’s made supplemental income in other ways like coaching other creators in order to make rent.
Ethereum gas fees take a large chunk of her income as well.
To mint on Ethereum, costs are incurred when performing any sort of function on its network.These fees can be even more expensive than the NFT itself.Many have turned to other blockchains and Layer-2s like Polygon and Solana because they have lower costs and shorter transaction times.
Once this market cycle subsides, Chisholm predicts that she will take home an even larger amount of money than the six figures she made when she started.
Large companies pouring millions, and at times billions , into NFTs and blockchain integration leave the artist optimistic for the industry’s future.Twitter, for example, announced plans for blockchain integration on its platform in January.
“I do believe this is the year where I’m going to make a lot of profit,” she said.”I actually don’t doubt it at all.I feel it in my bones.”
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